ARTICLES ABOUT LABOR PARTY BY DATE - PAGE 2

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's prime minister appointed Gary Gray, a former adviser to the country's largest oil and gas firm Woodside Petroleum, as resources minister on Monday in a cabinet reshuffle forced by a string of ministerial resignations. Gray, a senior Labor party figure in the resource-rich Western Australia state, should ensure an advocate for the resources industry remains in place at a time when investment in the sector is slowing amid signs the mining boom has peaked.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd ruled out a challenge to incumbent Julia Gillard in a vote for the leadership of the Labor Party on Thursday. Rudd, who was rolled by Gillard in 2010, said he gave his word a year ago that he would not challenge again, and that he would only return to the leadership if drafted with the overwhelming support of the Labor Party. But he said those circumstances did not exist at present. Gillard has called a leadership ballot for 4.30 p.m. (05.30GMT)

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's ruling Labor Party will hold a special meeting to vote on leadership later on Thursday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard told Parliament on Thursday. She said the meeting would vote on the positions of prime minister and deputy prime minister. The ballot is meant to end destabilization from lawmakers who want former prime minister Kevin Rudd to return as leader to arrest a slump in opinion polls, which have the conservative opposition consistently ahead of the centre-left government.

JERUSALEM, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party is set to win a parliamentary election on Jan. 22 although the popularity of a far-right party opposed to Palestinian statehood is growing, polls showed on Friday. Two out of three surveys showed the right-wing Likud losing voters to political newcomer Naftali Bennett's religious party Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home)and to a fractured centre-left bloc. All still predicted a strong right-wing coalition emerging in the 120-seat parliament, which would assure Netanyahu another term.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Jeroen Dijsselbloem looked set to become the next Dutch finance minister after Prime Minister Mark Rutte summoned the Labor MP, who is expected to back austerity at home and a tough line on euro zone deficit sinners, to a meeting on Thursday. Dijsselbloem, 46, has been widely tipped to succeed Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager after Rutte's Liberals reached a coalition agreement with the Labor Party this week. Under the new government the Netherlands, one of a handful of economies in the euro zone still rated AAA, is expected to remain a firm ally of Germany, which opposes more aid to euro zone members struggling with high debt.

VILNIUS (Reuters) - Lithuania's president on Monday vetoed a proposed coalition government, saying one of the three parties involved stood accused of serious voter fraud in a weekend election and was therefore unfit to govern. President Dalia Grybauskaite's surprise intervention cast a cloud of uncertainty over the aftermath of the election - which turned into a vote against austerity - setting up a possible standoff or new talks on forming a different government. The party accused of fraud, the Labor Party, strongly denies wrongdoing.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's Liberal Party and the Labor Party said they had reached a coalition deal on Monday, paving the way for a pro-austerity, pro-European government to be sworn in as early as next week. Rutte, whose Liberals won the most seats in the September 12 election, will remain as prime minister, while Labor Party member of parliament Jeroen Dijsselbloem is widely tipped to replace Jan Kees de Jager as the new finance minister. Under Rutte and De Jager, a Christian Democrat whose party lost heavily in the election, the Netherlands has been at the forefront of calls for tight fiscal policies across the euro zone to tackle the region's debt crisis.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is climbing back into contention for the next general election, still about 12 months away, with two new opinion polls showing a boost for her Labor Party government. Both a Newspoll, in the Australian newspaper, and a Nielsen poll in the Fairfax newspapers show support for Gillard's government has been building since July in a major turn-around for her minority government. Government lawmakers said the polls reflected a growing acceptance of a controversial carbon tax, introduced in July, and that a heated opposition campaign against the tax was no longer working with voters.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The two parties running neck-and-neck to become the largest in the Dutch parliament were spending their last day before a general election trying to gather voters from the political fringes on Tuesday. At the end of a campaign that has been dominated by the euro zone crisis and the question of whether the Netherlands can afford its generous welfare state, acting prime minister Mark Rutte's Liberal party emphasized its euroscepticism, while the center-left Labor Party promised a defense of social cohesion.

VALLETTA (Reuters) - Dom Mintoff, Malta's former socialist prime minister and dominant political force for more than half a century, died at his residence near Valletta on Monday, the government said. He was 96. Mintoff, known for his confrontational style and fiery speeches, oversaw the closure of Britain's military base on the island in 1979 - ending the 200-year-old military link. The current leader of the labor party Joseph Muscat said on Monday all Maltese had been orphaned by Mintoff's death.